tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948885059517209129.post2846406719915216867..comments2016-08-22T08:52:11.001-04:00Comments on Quintessence of Dust: "The gift is not like the trespass"Stephen Mathesonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05057004085073574659noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948885059517209129.post-65049078499793308692009-10-25T21:51:48.680-04:002009-10-25T21:51:48.680-04:00It is not those who hear the law who are righteous...It is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God&#39;s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.&quot; Rom. 2:13<br /><br />&quot;The law was added so that the trespass might increase.&quot; Rom. 5:20<br /><br />God made a change of the law by adding a word to it AFTER Jesus was crucified. Heb. 7:12b<br />So the trespass, Jesus&#39; crucifixion, became a unilateral sin. But the gift can only be obtained on an individual basis by the faith to obey a law. The Lord&#39;s command given through the apostles and there is only one way to obey this command. But the way you have been taught to obey this command is in error. Caused by theologians who have no idea how to interpret the Bible.Theodore A. Joneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10197982266788152081noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948885059517209129.post-50676093358626795362007-12-18T21:55:00.000-05:002007-12-18T21:55:00.000-05:00To dbecke--Thanks for the thoughtful comment. A f...To dbecke--<BR/>Thanks for the thoughtful comment. A few notes and answers follow.<BR/>1) I certainly didn't mean to imply that the issue is "simple theologically." My main goal in the post was to object to the unacceptable equivalence between Adam and Christ that emerges from a strong emphasis on particulars of Adam's nature or history, and to advocate instead a focus on what we know, which is Christ. When we focus there, we know about atonement and justification, even if we're not clear on where and when Adam did what he did.<BR/>2) I'm afraid I don't really understand inerrancy. It's easy enough to find biblical statements that are obviously false, and the tools we reach for at that point are the same tools I would recommend when approaching human origins. Paul almost certainly believed that Adam was a single human being who lived in Iraq in 4000 BC, but the author of Genesis almost certainly believed the land sat on pillars in a vast sea, with a fenestrated crystalline bowl overhead. Asserting that scripture is "without falsehood" is an extraordinary and, in my view, unsustainable claim. This may be grounds for my excommunication from evangelicalism, but the alternative seems far more dangerous.<BR/>3) I don't see how an evolutionary view of humanity entails theosis as opposed to "radical break." I certainly don't know how the particulars of the story might go, but my whole point is this: we know there's a problem, a radical and serious problem, and it should hardly matter whether we're not all clear on the exact details of its origin. On inerrancy, I doubt I was ever a good evangelical, but on atonement and justification, I'm impeccable. :-)<BR/>4) I don't read theology, and I'm also curious about strong conservative evangelical/reformed theologians who are tackling these questions. You can get a start in <I>Perspectives on an Evolving Creation</I>, but if you find anything really good, please post it here.<BR/>Thanks for the comment; I'll go tackle the newest one now.SFMathesonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05057004085073574659noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948885059517209129.post-22845066419421879582007-12-14T16:55:00.000-05:002007-12-14T16:55:00.000-05:00Sorry I'm coming to this late in the game. I'm no...Sorry I'm coming to this late in the game. I'm not sure that the issue is so simple theologically.<BR/><BR/>North American evangelicalism and Westminster-reformed tradition I think historically have distinguished themselves from liberal theology in three key ways: (1) scripture; (2) atonement; and (3) justification.<BR/> <BR/>Scripture of course is the inerrancy question. Atonement relates to an emphasis on substitutionary atonement. Justification relates to an emphasis on personal justification by grace alone through faith alone and implies individual conversion. <BR/> <BR/>Inerrancy is a big deal and it is difficult for many evangelicals, including me, to swallow the idea that Paul got "Adam" wrong as an example of accommodation. <BR/> <BR/>The issues of atonement and justification, though, I think are equally big deals, if not more so in some ways. To illustrate the stakes and scope of this, consider the current debate within evangelical and reformed circles about the "new perspective on Paul." The "new perspective's" take on Paul, works righteousness, and the Jewish law, and the nature of the gospel brought out some of the evangelical attack dogs, particularly in the reformed wing of evangelicalism. The battle still rages. <BR/> <BR/>In short, compromising at all on substitutionary atonement and justification is grounds for excommunication from evangelicalism, at least among evangelicalism's old guard, and for some good reasons. And both substitutionary atonement and personal justification by grace alone through faith alone are tied directly to an Augustinian understanding of original sin, at least as I understand evangelical and reformed theology. <BR/> <BR/>From what I have seen, most serious efforts at reconciling human evolution and original sin seem to move away from an Augustinian understanding of original righteousness and original sin and towards a view that has humanity moving towards some kind of <EM>telos</EM>.<BR/><BR/>If humans were not created in a state of original righteousness from which they "fell," but rather collectively moved onto the "wrong road," and if we are not compelled (or in Paul's words, "enslaved") to sin, what prevents us from adjusting ("justifying") ourselves to get back onto the "right" road? And if sin is not a radical break from God's perfect holiness, but is more like a wrong step in a continuum of development, what need is there for a brutal substitutionary atonement? Does taking this middle way suggest a move away from the traditional reformed understandings of atonement and justification and towards the eastern notion of theosis? <BR/> <BR/>It seems to me that theosis is exactly where fully accepting human evolution seems to go -- this is some of what I sense in my (limited) reading of TE's such as Ted Peters, for example. For those of us with deep evangelical / reformed roots will balk because this seems like a path away from our core distinctives and towards the sort of fuzzy liberalism that (in our perception at least) damaged the mainline churches. And the very difficult thing about these particular questions is that they implicate questions of eternal destiny. <BR/><BR/>I wish some good reasonably conservative reformed and evangelical theologians and Biblical scholars would start to take this on, but I don't see that happening -- do you know of any? It seems that most of the theological speculation comes from scientists, which can be as bad as theologians doing science.dbeckenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948885059517209129.post-43348856795890976612007-10-23T13:02:00.000-04:002007-10-23T13:02:00.000-04:00Adam is important because otherwise we're left won...Adam is important because otherwise we're left wondering how the world came to be in this state. God created a cosmos that was good. Something must have happened to it.<BR/><BR/>Likewise with respect to human nature. God created human beings good. Something must have happened to us.<BR/><BR/>I have never subscribed to original sin in the Calvinist sense, that we're all born depraved, so that we cannot even believe in Christ unless God first elects us and gives us the grace to believe. Nor in the Roman Catholic sense that says a newborn baby cannot go to heaven unless the Church anoints it before it is pronounced dead. (I think Roman Catholics have now retreated from that position.)<BR/><BR/>But original sin is also interpreted to mean that we are all born with an innate tendency &mdash; a predisposition &mdash; to sin. It speaks to a perverseness that seems to be bred in our very bones. Theologically, that perversity is traced back to Adam's sin.<BR/><BR/>The idea is, God created a good world, with good human beings, and there must have been a first sin. All the trouble which is so familiar to us follows from that.<BR/><BR/>I haven't rejected the idea that the story of Adam, Eve and the serpent is mythological. Indeed, I'm sure it is at least expressed in mythological language. But I leave the door open to the possibility that it is a mythological account of a historical event.<BR/><BR/>I posted an <A HREF="http://emergingfrombabel.blogspot.com/2007/09/evolution-is-true-and-adam-is.html" REL="nofollow">excerpt</A> from Derek Kidner's commentary on Genesis a while ago. You might be interested in it because it's directly relevant to the discussion.Stephen (aka Q)https://www.blogger.com/profile/04018824090441668781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948885059517209129.post-53801297025682947602007-10-10T19:53:00.000-04:002007-10-10T19:53:00.000-04:00Gordon--Great point about the counterintuitiveness...Gordon--<BR/>Great point about the counterintuitiveness (that word took me half an hour to type) of nature. (Reminds me of the over-quoted quote from <A HREF="http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/J._B._S._Haldane" REL="nofollow">Haldane and/or Eddington</A> on the strangeness of the universe.) Although... I confess that I don't even see the reasonableness of the evangelical Adam/Christ linkage: how is it intuitive at all that Adam's sin can affect me? (Is it genetic?) And worse, how can we even discuss the mechanism by which Christ's righteousness is imputed to believers? I'm baffled by this weird insistence on Adam's historicity, as though there is some logical or intuitive reason why it's indispensable in redemptive history. I just don't see it.SFMathesonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05057004085073574659noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948885059517209129.post-2360437355356611312007-10-10T16:15:00.000-04:002007-10-10T16:15:00.000-04:00Steve, good post. I get asked this question all t...Steve, good post. I get asked this question all the time and have developed a response that seems to work most of the time. It goes something like this:<BR/><BR/>As Christians, we can very easily project our theology onto nature, and rather than see things as they are, we have a tendency to see them as we think they should be - simply becasue it reinforces our theology. But the fact is, nature is very good at revealing truth that is both counterintuitive to common sense and to theology.<BR/><BR/>Teh geocentric controversy of the Middle Ages is a case in point. We can't feel the earth moving. Prior to Foccault's pendulum or the ability to measure stellar parallax, we couldn't see the earth moving. And the whole idea of the earth rotating and hurling through space at unbelievable speeds just seems to defy common sense. Now add theology to this. Up through the 17th century, there were traditions about heaven and hell and our place in the physical universe that were very ingrained into the Christian world view. Quite simply, heaven was "up there" and hell was "down there" and entire cosmos was only slightly larger than earth. This was the order of creation. And since the earth was the teleological centerpiece of God's creation, the place where He put on human flesh and dwelt among us, then it only made sense that it also be fixed at the center of the tiny cosmos. So you have a view of the world that seems both consistent with common sense and theology.<BR/><BR/>But then comes Copernicus, then Gallileo, then Kepler and Newton. You can see what a scandal it was to take the earth, which contains the devil and all his angels, and elevate it into the heavens, which were still thought of as perfect, eternal, and unchanging (based on the Greeks, not necessarily Scripture). You can see how this would upset the order of the universe. Or as Calvin put it from the pulpit, "to pervert the order of nature". <BR/><BR/>But by the end of the 18th century, it was clear that the geocentric universe was incorrect. And so Christians everywhere had to let go of those relationships that they had mistakenly drawn between nature and theology, because to hold on to them would be to subvert the Christian witness.<BR/><BR/>Has anything really changed? Modern Christians have taken this idea of the relationship between Adam and Christ and built an alternate anthropolgy around it. But like the "theologically sound" cosmology of the middle-ages, this "theolgical sound" anthropology does not hold up to even the most basic physical evidence (taxonomy, the fossil record, biogeography, etc...). Once again showing us that nature is not able to reveal those truths necessary to know God and the way of salvation. <BR/><BR/>It it could, then what the point of special revelation?<BR/><BR/>-GJGGordon J. Gloverhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05775671718952764368noreply@blogger.com